There’s been a lot written over the last three years about the West Virginia Turnpike, but I’m wondering if maybe Charles Dickens could have summed its history up best.

No matter who tells the story, the Turnpike always starts in Princeton and ends in Charleston, but its winding path through public perception could aptly be called “A Tale of Two Roads.”

When it was completed in 1954 and carried a price tag of $133 million, the two-lane Turnpike represented southern West Virginia’s best chance at development, a link to Charleston and other major highways that motorists and freighters were otherwise forced to travel miles and hours out of their way to reach.

At the time, a region reaching for business and rich new horizons agreed to foot the bill for its portion of Interstate 77, despite the fact that the rest of the state got its part for free. The people, businesses and officials of southern West Virginia decided we would pay our way, along with the out-of-state travelers seeking a more direct route to parts elsewhere.

The plan worked well. By the 1970s, the two-lane road that ran the 88-mile span wasn’t big enough to handle all the traffic that traveled over Camp Creek hill, through Flat Top, over Paint Creek and along the Kanawha River. The road was due for an upgrade, which cost more money and ensured the people who rode and worked on the Turnpike would continue paying its tolls until the expansion that made it four lanes was paid off.

That portion was completed in 1988, and although the tolls were once planned to be removed, they have become a mainstay under which southern West Virginians fear we will forever be saddled.

What was once the best of roads in the area has fallen into disrepair and become one of the worst, known for its bumpy ride, uneven lanes and lines of barrels that sometimes seem more prevalent than the wildflowers along the region’s wooded hillsides.

For this, travelers who don’t enroll in a commuter discount plan will be required to pay 60 percent more over at least the next 10 years, when the bonds are again set to be paid completely.

This week, Parkways Authority members critiqued local lawmakers who have long fought the toll increases, beginning in late 2005, when the panel, which did not include Princeton’s Bill Seaver or Bluefield’s Mike Vinceguerra at the time, slipped a toll increase through without public notice or hearings in any of the affected counties. Many outraged calls and a class-action lawsuit later, the hike was reversed, and it’s been a fight in the Legislature ever since.

Seaver said toll increase opponents never look at the positive aspects of the Turnpike, and there are indeed bright stories paved into the path that’s reportedly more than $230 million behind on repairs and crumbling in places.

The I-77/U.S. 460 interchange just east of Princeton reportedly sees more than 70,000 vehicles daily and has spurred business growth of hotels, restaurants and retailers that are always bustling and busy.

The road no doubt keeps various opportunities open and connects an otherwise-isolated part of the state with places near and far.

It employs local residents to man the three mainline toll booths 24 hours a day, seven days a week, along with the men and women who maintain and patrol the road to keep it safe.

Though many of us might not say it, we are thankful for those benefits. We just believe we’ve paid enough for them over the last 55 years.

We understand that out-of-state traffic accounts for an estimated 76 percent of the tolls collected on the Turnpike, but that doesn’t ease the rub for local residents who travel the local road and have been taxed twice each time we’ve traveled it. We find it very hard to call that heroic.

We pay our gasoline tax each time we stop in at the pump. That’s the money that’s supposed to fund our highways, and that’s enough for travelers anywhere else in West Virginia.

Then, each time we take a trip over the Turnpike, we pay again, this time for the privilege of traversing such a modern highway miracle.

Though we were always less than thrilled with the idea of double travel taxation, we forked over the dollar and quarter at each toll booth, only a little grudgingly.

In December 2005, we’d had enough. That’s when a previous version of the West Virginia Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority ramrodded the same 60-percent increase members approved Wednesday, only then, they did it with no warning and no hearing.

Although the 75 additional cents at each booth got the most attention and represented the bull’s-eye that drew our ire, it wasn’t just the money that made us mad.

The real rub was the arrogance that told us our opinions and our welfare didn’t matter nearly as much as the dollars the Turnpike pulled from our pockets and used to build debt-ridden projects and failed development designs.

It was the condescension that rolled south as surely as the Turnpike’s lanes and referred to us as “those people” from the part of the state leaders like to forget.

Many say it was the same patronization that led the Authority to schedule the Mercer County toll hike hearing, in the latest bid to raise rates, on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and gave one of its leaders enough nerve to say he felt “barbecued” by our anger.

It’s no surprise that the toll increase passed Wednesday, and it’s not going to shock anyone when southern West Virginians remain opposed to paying. In the best of times or the worst of times, I imagine these two realities will remain, even as Del. John Shott pointed out, EZ Pass discounts for Turnpike commuters are a start toward more fair traveling conditions. It will likely take a lot more time and many moves toward eliminating the tolls to ease southern frustration.

Although state leaders often like to paint southern West Virginians as crybabies with crazy causes, they seem to forget that we’re a strong-willed, hardworking people who don’t mind to pay our way and have done so on the Turnpike since 1954.

And that makes it hard to see the bright spots on even the best of roads paved through actions we can only see as injustice through some of the worst times.

Tammie Toler is Princeton Times editor. Contact her at ttoler@ptonline.net.